The years have flown by so fast for some veterans on the World Cup that they hardly realize they’re veterans.
FISALPINE.com is running a series with a few ladies racing on the Cup for 10 years or longer, asking them to take a look back on what has changed since they were rookies.
It was in 2001 that Julia Mancuso first earned points on the World Cup (27th in the super G in Cortina d’Ampezzo), although she started on the tour the previous season as a technical specialist. The 27-year-old Squaw Valley, California native has since landed 28 podiums including five victories (three in downhill, one in super-combined and one in Kombined), checked off four world championships (and four medals) and three Olympic Games (three medals).
Although it’s been more than a decade, Mancuso still revels in that rush she felt when she first joined the World Cup.
“I remember just being shocked when I was 15 and 16 and just doing the local races, coming to the World Cup. It was this amazing venue, fenced in, with banners and stuff … that has just stayed in my mind as a vivid memory,” she says.
As far as what has changed, it’s not the electronic advancements that first leap to mind for Mancuso, but how the course was outlined. She remembers the days without paint.
“When I started on the World Cup, everything was pine boughs,” she says. “We didn’t have a dye machine, so it was finding the pine boughs an putting them on the course.”
This, she said, was a typical task when visibility was bad.
“It was like, ‘Oh we can’t see … it’s flat light, somebody go find some pine boughs,’” she recalls, adding that the boughs could have cost some time for training. “You didn’t want to ski over them because it was slow.
With the many procedures that are involved in doping and test, Mancuso remembers days when there was protocol for making sure one was male or female.
“When I made World juniors, we went and got a swab for gender testing. Caroline Lalive, who’s years older than me, when she had World juniors, they had to go for gender testing and pull their pants down,” Mancuso says, laughing. “So that’s changed!”
Back protectors were not required back in the day, but now Mancuso can’t imagine being on course without one.
“At one point someone was like, ‘you can’t go without a back protector!’ and then it was in my head and I was like, oh my god, I have to be careful,” she says.
One very obvious change in the last decade of top-level alpine racing is, of course, the extremely helpful invention of the Injection bar. Mancuso recalls a time when the second-run flip only took the top 15 from the first run because the snow would become so mangled.
“On the tech side, we definitely didn’t have injection back in the day,” she says. “One year in slalom – one of my first years that I broke into the top 30s, I was running in the 50s and it would be so rutty but I was good at that … coming from the back. The ruts were HUGE but I was making it to the finish not too far out. So they’re like, all of a sudden, ‘Oh it’s bad conditions, so just the first 15.’ There were like three races that season that I made second run and it was the first 15. They never do that anymore.”
As for long-standing lucky heirlooms to carry on the road, Mancuso claims she is “not a superstitious girl,” but always wears the gloves from her 2006 gold medal in the Olympic giant slalom race.
“I still use my old gloves,” she says. “They’re kind of a good luck charm, I think.”
Watch what else Julia had to say about “Way back When” in this video.
